LesPaul_Player_91

As others have said it probably sums up their relationship well. It seems as though it was a pretty bad breakup. The Axl/Slash thing reminds me of exchanges between Roger Waters and David Gilmour after Waters left.

US in 2011/late 2010 I'd guess. After that some downtime I'd think.

I don't see Ashba as pretending to be Slash, the guy's style (in terms of playing and appearence) hasn't really changed since joining Guns. Sure he is more Slash like than Robin and Bucket but then you'd have to go some to be less Slash like than those two! [Not a dig, both are great players]

At the end of the day the minute that Axl hired someone with an old school blues rock style in terms of playing comparisons were going to be drawn.

Also, you could equally say that Slash was copying Jimmy Page and Joe Perry back in the day. The smoking on stage, the double neck SG etc. Musicians take ideas from other musicians in terms of playing style, gear and image so its no surprise DJ is like Slash is some respects.

I doubt Axl just hired him because he was Slash-like it probably has something to do with the fact that he co wrote The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack and Saints Of Los Angeles both great albums and Axl saw the potential he could bring to the band if and when the current lineup work on new material. It also may be that Axl wanted to go more into a classic Guns direction.

Yeah I agree, the guy is clearly talented. I just find it funny that he has amped up his similarities to Slash since joining the band. To anyone who is not familiar with DJ it must look like a tribute to Slash. I know a few people in Dublin thought it was the great Cancer himself They must have had a few too many beers.

I just find it odd that Axl can tolerate someone who so clearly is a reminder of the past. Let me put it this way. If you went out with a chick for years and then had a really bad break-up, would you then date another chick who reminds you of your ex? I just don't get it.

At Reading in fact some people behind me were pointing out similarities to Slash as well. The thing is as I said you can point out similarities all you want but then equally you could list the ways Slash is similar to Page. However I agree it gives the naysayers more to whine about than say Bucket, Finck and Bumble did because those are/were so different, no doubt partly why they were picked. I can also see why some people may think he is trying to be Slash. Personally I think DJ is one of the best things that has happened to GN'R.

I get what you mean about Axl as well but he clearly can tolerate him as they seem to get on so well. At the end of the day playing the older songs must be a reminder of the past as well.

I don't see Ashba as pretending to be Slash, the guy's style (in terms of playing and appearence) hasn't really changed since joining Guns. Sure he is more Slash like than Robin and Bucket but then you'd have to go some to be less Slash like than those two! [Not a dig, both are great players]

At the end of the day the minute that Axl hired someone with an old school blues rock style in terms of playing comparisons were going to be drawn.

Also, you could equally say that Slash was copying Jimmy Page and Joe Perry back in the day. The smoking on stage, the double neck SG etc and playing style. Musicians take ideas from other musicians in terms of playing style, gear and image so its no surprise DJ is like Slash is some respects. Slash is hugely influential after all and rightly so.

I doubt Axl just hired him because he was Slash-like it probably has something to do with the fact that he co wrote The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack and Saints Of Los Angeles both great albums and Axl saw the potential he could bring to the band if and when the current lineup work on new material. It also may be that Axl wanted to go more into a classic Guns direction.

Possibly its to take care of any overdubs on the record. I mean whilst Page did all the guitar in Zeppelin, live he obviously couldn't do all the overdubbed parts at the same time. Whilst you could argue it isn't really necessary to do so (I mean Zeppelin sounded awsome live) Axl strikes me as a perfectionist.

Didn't Slash said when he and Zakk Wylde jammed it didn't really work as they were both lead guitarists? Personally I don't think GN'R nowadays sound any worse off because of having two lead players.

Really hope this isn't fake, its hillarious!

Ron's beard and Axl's moustache will rule the world!

Dublin went the way it did for many reasons:

1) The venue: People were told before the show that after 23:30 their cars would be clamped, kept in the car park overnight and they'd have an €100 fine. This meant that those who had the least reason to worry about the show going on late (they weren't relying on public transport) now had one of the biggest. After Axl walked off people were told the show was over and ushered out of the venue and couldn't get back in once the show restarted.

2) The bottle throwers: Throwing bottles at the stage is unacceptable behaviour. Annoyed Axl is late? Fine, but two wrongs don't make a right and hitting him with a bottle won't turn back time and make him get on stage earlier.

3) Axl: Going on stage at 22:30 will annoy people, it will be a minority who turn violent and boo but still it will annoy people given that all other big names go on stage in the UK & Ireland around 21:00. He was right to stop the show during Jungle and give people warnings. And I can see why he left the stage. However, things would have worked out better if he had came back out given a huge rant about bottles and how they're dangerous to the band and the crowd [and I'm sure the crowd would agree] and then deliver a kick ass show.

Anyway, its water under the bridge now, the last two shows have been great. I'm just hoping that when the band return to the UK (and I know Ireland isn't the UK but its its in teh general vicinity) that there isn't any drama.

I think that after the mammoth Chinese Democracy tour comes to an end in 2011 we'll have another hiatus during which time work will be done on the next album. Whether that will be more stuff from the CD years or completely new material (I'm guessing the former) I don't know. After the hiatus we'll have a new tour. How long that hiatus is however will be anyone's guess. Hopefully it won't be as long as previous ones.

Still waiting, but the crowd is very happy. People are chanting and cheering!

Good sign!

Ron, it must have been pretty awful to have been at that Dublin show.

At the end of the day, even those with their heads up Axl's arse would feel pretty bad if a concert they had waited a long time to see and were really excited about went down the pan like that. Although the scary thing is maybe they wouldn't. At the end of the day they weren't at the show and you were. I certainly know that if Reading were like Dublin then I'd be feeling the way you are now.

As I see it nobody's a hater here, we're all mainly here because we like new GN'R, Chinese Democracy etc. Just because you don't follow a celebrity blindly and approve of all their actions doesn't mean you hate them, I just wish some people would see it that way. Nobody's perfect and everybody's actions are subject to criticism.

If and when you go to another GN'R show I hope its better than the show you saw in Dublin. I'm hoping that when GN'R play the UK in October its relatively drama free. I also think that people saying derogatory things about Irish people as a whole and the crowd at Dublin as a whole are misguided. At the end of the day there were a few idiots in the crowd which there would be at any concert and I'd say that before the shit hit the fan 99.9% of people were up for a good night of rock and roll.

Anyway Guys, this all feels like water under the bridge now!?

There is nothing more we can do about it and I think we have discussed it to death!! Obviously there is 2 schools of thought here!

Don't worry there will be fresh controversy to deal with very shortly if AXL hasn't changed his ways and learned any lessons YET AGAIN!!

Its all about the Rome thread now! Lets hope there is no drama in Rome.

Some of you are thick fucking cunts

A minority of fans in Dublin wanted trouble........................... Minority

+1

People here can't seem to grasp that a handful of people out of THOUSANDS does not equate to the crowd at a whole. Hell, at Reading there were one or two people booing around me but people told them to shut up and on the whole everybody was enjoying it. I take it it was similar at Dublin. Of course there were no bottling incidents at Reading. [Although I did see one bottle on stage at Reading to the far right of the stage, luckily Axl didn't notice.]

Get on stage at 9pm/finish the show at 11/11:30. Do this and all should run smoothly.

Other options: print the start time on ticket and be prepared to play to smaller audiences and also that some venues may not book them. Venues would have to pay staff overtime as some people have mentioned and as such may not wish to book a band that plays until 1am.

There you have it. People can have the "if you don't like it, fuck off" attitude all they want but at the end of the day GN'R would be playing much smaller venues if they were only playing to people who were completely 100% okay with everything Axl does.

Hopefully Rome tonight will be great but if there are more and frequent incidents along the way I can see this tour derailing. It isn't the '80s or the '90s and GN'R aren't the biggest band of all time any more. People go into concerts expecting different things. All other acts have adapted accordingly and are doing hugely successful and drama free tours. If however nothing changes this tour or the next (if there is one relatively soon after this one ends) Axl will be the architect of his own downfall.

Which is a damn shame. I don't like to see my favourite band of all time go through times like this. They still are the best live act around and GN'R in 2010 contains hugely talented musicians. If they could just change one or two things they could be huge again.

What I do take objection to, is Axl coming back out and giving the remaining fans a half-assed performance. Why punish thousands of fans because of two or three drunken idiots? The majority of that audience just wanted to have a good night out. They didn't deserve Axl's blatant contempt.

You're lucky he came back out at all after the shitty reception he got from the lame Dublin crowds. You should show some gratitude.

So two or three people equates to the whole crowd. The scary thing is I actually believe if the same thing happened at a show you were at you'd still be happy at the fact you effectively wasted good money. I also find it scary how people follow Axl blindly. I'm sure he could commit genocide and people would say "way to go Axl, that's rock and roll! He's being who he is!"

The idea that people should show some gratitude for a half arsed performance I can't comprehend. At least if he hadn't returned people would have got a refund. Although I guess a half arsed GN'R show is better than none at all. I'm sure Bumble and Ashba were on fire anyway. I agree with Mick Wall on this: "Even the most ardent Axl fans (a rapidly swindling band of naysayers) must surely admit after these latest episodes in Reading and Leeds that the whole sorry saga went way beyond the realms of ‘boring’ centuries ago, passed through the nebula of ‘unacceptable’ even before Slash and co walked out, and now resides inside a file marked ‘mental’." I'm still a huge GN'R fan but I find Axl's behaviour very hard to defend.

Now I see the reason why many GnR fans stick to anything goes. All you Axl ass suckers don't seem to understand a small thing called educated criticism. You guys arnt real fans but merely online fuckwits who think they are cool by posting and defending their likewise delusional hero Axl Rose. "it has been like for the past 20 years", true Manets it has but that doesn't mean it is any more or less acceptable (and it is less btw) for axl to turn up late. You fools who think it is cool to turn up 1 hour + late to shows need your head examining. The fans arn't 20 anymore and this ain't the 80's either, so in the words of your hero Axl, fuckheads go home

+1

Hope everyone has a great time and that it is a drama free evening. Hopefully the worst days of this tour are over. [Worst in terms of drama not the shows.]

As others have said put on the ticket "Guns N Roses will be on stage at 22:30, this concert will finish after midnight."

The trouble with this however is that it will hurt ticket sales.

As I see it there are two ways things can go:

1) Play arenas but come on at 9.

2) Play smaller venues but come on later. [Or do fewer dates]

Otherwise members of the crowd will get restless if its not explicit that the show will finish after midnight and this drama will continue.

Wah wah. Poor me. Axl owes me etc. Yeah yeah we've heard it all before. Now go cry moar. You lot shouldn't have bottled the man, end of story.

"You lot" being two or three people out of many thousands?

It's a bad time for GN'R that's for sure. If it carries on this way Axl will lose many casual fans. If I were at the Dublin show I would have been gutted and I can see why many people were angry/upset. I also don't think the future looks bright if Axl insists on hitting the stage at half ten every night. I'm sure many of the people who were at Dublin would think twice about seeing GN'R again.

I don't really care what other people say when pretty much ALL other big name acts are three quarters of the way (or more) through their set at half ten you know something's up.

The vast majority of concert goers aren't like people on here. They wouldn't shell out money on a hotel, wait for hours at a train station or outside the venue, take a day off work just to see a GN'R show. It also seems that the only people who are completely okay with Axl hitting the stage at half ten are people on here. Hell, I'm not okay with the late starts, I put up with them as I'm a huge GN'R fan but I could never defend them.

Throwing bottles is inexcusable and could seriously hurt people (including people in the crowd!) so I understand why Axl did what he did but then you have to see that such a scenario would probably be avoided if he just hit the stage at a normal time. Not everyone lives and breathes GN'R and as such won't put up with as much as people on here do.

There's a solution to this: print the start time on the ticket and play smaller venues to the diehard fans. However, I doubt this will ever happen.

I'll be interested to see how the rest of the tour progresses and hopefully things will improve.

On an unrelated note I went to a Robert Plant show last night, he hit the stage just gone nine, had a great connection to the audience, did a great set and finished around 10:50. [and therefore I managed to get home and didn't need a hotel or to wait around at a train station.] None of the crowd bottled him even if it wasn't completely a heavy rock show and the Zeppelin tunes were rearranged. His voice was fantastic and had a great stage presence. Now there's a true professional.

About taking time to set the stage up:

Roadies set the stage up very quickly after the support band finished (within twenty minutes).

They then spent another forty minutes double checking (i.e. stalling) what they had done.

There was one period where a roadie spent ten minutes sitting on a drum stool staring at the audience-

not even playing or hitting the drums. Just staring. I got the impression that everything had been checked before the

support band had even come on.

It's all just stalling. hell, if Nine Inch Nails with their insanely complex visuals can get on stage at 9pm after two support bands so can GN'R. The same goes for Roger Waters (when he was at a festival and therefore had bands on before him). It's just buying them time as fans will get less restless if they think something is being done.

Good analogy LES PAUL, even Paul S. says these guys are far better as they have the old energy the original KISS had.

There's a lot of talk here today about why old members left, then this thread about new members being partners. Let me point out after Waters lost the legal battle to Gilmour over the name "Pink Floyd" the remaining original members were under contract to David. He owns the name now, that's that, the rest were hired hands. Two of them were guys who were there 3 years before Gilmour joined the band in 68! (Mason and Wright, RIP Richard)

I think the fans like to speculate as to the unhappiness of the current members, like Axl is screwing them over. Yes, I see a lot of fans complain. Ya know who I don't hear complaining? THE CURRENT MEMBERS!

There's a great adage that applies here. "The man who does the payin' has the sayin'."

Peace

Also on the original Wall tour Richard was effectively just a hired hand as he had been sacked by Waters previously. Ironically this meant he was the only one out of the band to make a profit from the shows.

Also, I think he wasn't officially a full member again until The Division Bell even though he was back in the band for A Momentary Lapse Of Reason.

None of this would have happened if he had not made an ultimatum to an increasingly angry and drunk audience. Someone was bound to

break it. He should have just said can you please stop throwing things, thanks, or tried to pick out the person who was throwing things.

It was not good to punish whole crowd for one drunken guy's mistake. He squandered all the good will that he had even up to half ten,

when he came on late.

ok then thank you stop blaming Axl as it was clearly a security issue... it is not Axl's responsibility to pick people out

Agreed. Since when is it any band's responsibility to act as their own security guards??!

I just can't believe the amount of negativity on this board, especially towards Axl. Losers throw bottles at him (plastic or otherwise) and it's HIS fault. He hits the stage when he's ready - and when he goes on doesn't just depend on him! - and everyone's throwing a kindergarten hissy fit cause he didn't cater his showtime to perfectly meet each and every concert goers' needs. It's a ROCK CONCERT people, not a bedtime story. And no one turns into a fuckin' pumpkin or however that fairy tale goes if they're not home and snuggled up in bed by midnite. Can some of you just grow the fuck up?

I swear you are the most biased pro-Axl member on this board, whenever a negative comment is said you are always there to defend your precious Axl. That kind of behavior is downright scary, not to mention creepy.

No one likes waiting for their favorite band to rock up on stage. When Guns played in Melbourne in 2007 they showed up at 12, yes 12am and finished at 2am. You can say "oh but the fans should know Guns show up late" and thats fine, but Axl should expect some angry fans and emptier arenas. Im not justifying the bottle throwing, its not something i would do, but i can surely understand that fans would be less then impressed. Maybe Axl will learn some discipline and common decency to paying fans when he is playing for 3000 people instead of the 8000 he gets now? That would surely be justified as people are sick of his late shit.

Im not condoning the bottle throwing, but im not condoning the lateness of the shows either. An hour and a half is a long time to wait between bands, the energy that the front band generated would be long gone. When i saw Megadeth and Slayer there was probably 30 minutes in between them, thats perfectly acceptable, not 1.5 fucken hours...

Im certainly reconsidering going to see Guns when they come down to Australia at the end of the year in fear of Axl walking off because of a bottle thrown, that would be a huge downer...

+1

It's also not just the wait between bands its the time he hits the stage as car parks close, trains/buses/tubes finish etc. And not everybody follows this band like we do on here so they probably don't expect this. Although to be honest there's no point trying to reason with people who defend Axl whatever. That guy could do anything and those people would claim how "rock and roll" it is and how it's other people's fault etc.

Bottle throwing isn't acceptable but then neither (if we're being realistic here) is rocking up at 10:30 which is 90 minutes later than other bands. And people probably throw the bottles because of the lateness so if you want to stop the bottles stop the lateness. Also, it is very naive of Axl to think he can waltz on stage at 10:30 with no explanation for lateness (other than I wanted to) and no apology and expect everyone to welcome him with open arms. And as for the stage taking a long time to set up that's bullshit. KISS have a huge stage show and they were on stage at 9pm when I saw them. If the stage act is that complex then don't have a support. That's probably the reason Roger Waters never has support at his own shows. (At least he didn't in '07 for the whole tour) Personally I think the whole stage thing is just to buy them time.

Also, if if were printed on the ticket that Guns wouldn't be on till 10:30 ticket sales would diminish and I think he knows this. You can't really have it both ways. Either get on stage at a reasonable time and have no shit from the audience or go on stage late and take the shit.

It really is a damn shame because GN'R are the best damn live act around.

It wouldn't change anything if he did.

Ron Wood may be an official member of the Rolling Stones, but he's still expendable. Every band I can think of has one or two members who are irreplaceable, and then just some dudes with instruments. Nobody gives a shit who's on guitar for KISS, or who's on bass for Bon Jovi.

I think quite a few people are pissy about Ace Frehley not being in KISS and Tommy wearing his makeup. But then you'll always get those people...

It's a minority, and certainly hasn't hampered Sonic Boom or the subsequent tour in any way. Similarly, if Bon Jovi ditched Sambora I don't think it would stop them selling out stadiums.

Yeah, I was just saying that you'll always get fans who moan about there not being original members and certainly Classic Rock Magazine always bang on about Ace Frehley. Although KISS are probably a tighter band without him now. I know some people who saw him live and said KISS were whole lot better and he was quite sloppy.

It wouldn't change anything if he did.

Ron Wood may be an official member of the Rolling Stones, but he's still expendable. Every band I can think of has one or two members who are irreplaceable, and then just some dudes with instruments. Nobody gives a shit who's on guitar for KISS, or who's on bass for Bon Jovi.

I think quite a few people are pissy about Ace Frehley not being in KISS and Tommy wearing his makeup. But then you'll always get those people...

Even if there is a reunion, which is unlikely since Axl has repeatedely done exactly what past-members have cited as causes of their departure during this tour, it will not last for more than a tour, or even a few dates...

It's a waste of talent on everybody's part.

As I've said before at most it will probably be a Pink Floyd at Live 8 show if it ever happens. Eg only a few songs. I couldn't see a GN'R reunion tour lasting.